Groundhog Day 2019

According to legend, if a groundhog sees its shadow on this day, there will be six more weeks of winter; if it doesn’t, then spring is right around the corner.

Of course, it’s a bit of a joke. As the Farmer’s Almanac says, “If he sees his shadow, we’ll have six more weeks of winter; if he doesn’t, it’ll be six weeks till spring” because, of course, the dates of the equinox do not change.

Though we recognize animal behavior isn’t the only way to judge planting dates, the tradition continues, often with a wink and a smile. Either way, spring will be here eventually, with the groundhog’s help or without it.

There’s a suburb to the northwest of Chicago named Woodstock. Its claim to fame is that it is where the Bill Murray movie “Groundhog Day” was filmed and they make the most of it. They have a groundhog which is a descendent of the one used in the movie and they wake the poor animal up every Feb 2nd. At least it had the decency to not see its shadow this morning.

Starting back in the 1800s these groundhogs could supposedly predict the weather, if they saw their shadow we would have six more weeks of winter. But it is not accurate, just something that is still done to this day. It actually has a Groundhog Day names after it.

Thank you for the explanation … in our country, like the Candlestick … the message says that if it crashes from a candle rather than a roof, then the winter is over … if it drops away from the roof for 40 days still cold … just this Today is no longer true